PDF Language of Fear: a Critical Discourse Study of Presidential Speeches

(1)

Special Issue: Vol. 18. No.7 (2021). 136-152. ISSN: 1823-884x Theme: Social Contemporary Issues

136

LANGUAGE OF FEAR:

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE STUDY OF PRESIDENTIAL SPEECHES

Ali Badeen Mohammed Al-Rikaby*, Hayder S. Naser & Debbita Tan Ai Lin

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons (INWs); specifically, how the issue is contextualized in political speeches by two world leaders. The presidents, of the United States of America (Donald Trump) and Iran (Hassan Rouhani), present us with contrastive rhetoric and in this paper, we compared their descriptions of INWs. In this critical discourse analysis (CDA) study, we also sought the possible reasons for differences between their descriptions. The selected corpus are Trump’s 2018 speech on Iran’s nuclear weapons program at the United National General Assembly (UNGA) and Rouhani’s 2017 speech on the same issue at the UNGA. These speeches were chosen because of their stance categories and degrees of subjectivity. Jäger’s (2001) CDA model is employed for the purpose of linguistic and contextual analyses. Additionally, Toulmin’s (2003) argumentative models are employed to identify the linguistic tools in both speech texts. The findings reveal contrastive topoi between the descriptions made by the two presidents. Essentially, Trump described INWs as posing a threat to Americans, global peace, and security. Rouhani, meanwhile, reclassified the meaning of INWs, steering it away from the realm of phobia and extending it to include the topoi of self-defense. The key implication here is this: world leaders do propagandize ideologies regardless of the effects of war, and this can be achieved by employing the language of fear for discourse is the crux of political jousting and of power relations.

Keywords: language of fear; presidential speeches; Iran nuclear weapons; Trump; Rouhani

INTRODUCTION

The language of fear in the presidential rhetoric constitutes a body of important discourse influencing the lives of thousands of people, for presidents often negotiate treaties via their contrastive rhetoric, or persuade citizens to vote for them or notify the public of national policies via such discourse. In this paper, we focus on how two presidents direct the assumptions and beliefs of the masses. Jackson (2005) asserts that for warfare to be reinforced, common everyday language needs to be replaced by the language of fear. In other words, because it is difficult to convince the public to go to war against another country, leaders often apply certain arguments and use special linguistic terms.

Donald Trump and Hassan Rouhani are heralds of the language of fear; studies conducted by Altheide (2006) and Jackson, Murphy and Poynting (2009) reveal that world leaders tend to reproduce the language of fear or the discourse of counterterrorism deliberately in their speeches. Both studies found that presidential and media rhetoric employ the language of fear under two broad conditions: (i) when they determine that it will help them achieve their aims more efficiently than other plan (since it entails lower production costs than other

(2)

137

approaches), and (ii) when they expect that the response costs of using fear-arousing language will be lower than the costs of other strategies.

In an important insight, Jäger (2001), KhosraviNik (2015) and Wodak (2015) suggest CDA models that may merit other critical concerns: the construction, deployment, and consumption of this fear as part of a broader politics of manipulation and propaganda. We applied at least part of their models or metaframes to better construct the picture that is drawn of INWs in two vital political speeches, in efforts to answer the questions posed in this research.

RELATED LITERATURE Discourse and CDA

Nothing can better identify people than their discourse. Discourse usually clarifies the values, beliefs and cultural themes of its people (Hassen, 2015). However, the main developments of CDA can be traced back to the early 1990s when the pioneering figures – van Dijk, Fairclough and Wodak – set up the main principles of CDA.

As the name suggests, CDA signifies “discourse analysis with critical stances” which concerns “real and often extended instances of social interaction that take a linguistic form or a partially linguistic form” (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997, p. 258). Wodak and Chilton (2005) maintain that CDA, as a critical theory, aims at demystifying discourse because it acts as a problem-oriented approach that deals with social and political problems such as racism, identity, gender, social change, hegemony and social justice.

According to van Dijk (2004), analyzing a discourse is not based on text only.

Researchers also need to pay attention to how a text can be produced. He states that discourse has three dimensions, namely text, social cognition and social context. At the level of the text being analyzed is the structure that builds the text and the strategies used to express the intended themes. Social cognition studies texts that involve individuals while social context studies the structure of discourse that develops in society.

Van Dijk (2019) divides the text into three levels. First, the macro structure: the global or general meaning of a text that can be observed by looking at the topic or theme put forward in a news piece. Second, the superstructure is the structure of discourse related to the framework of a text – essentially, how the parts of a particular text are arranged into a whole (news piece). Third, the microstructure is a discourse that can be observed from a small part of a text – words, sentences, propositions, clauses and images. In a similar vein, Gee (2005) terms these macro/micro semantic structures as ‘discourse’ and ‘Discourse’. The former refers to cases of language in use and real speech actions whereas the latter indicates the more abstract ways of using language.

Fairclough and Wodak (1997) offer eight basic principles to explain CDA: CDA addresses social problems, power relations are discursive, discourse constitutes society and culture, discourse does ideological work, discourse is historical, the link between text and society is mediated, discourse analysis is interpretive and explanatory, and CDA is a socially committed scientific paradigm. Johnstone (2008) argues that we call what we do ‘discourse analysis’ rather than ‘language analysis’ because we are not centrally focused on language as an abstract system. Rather, we are concerned with the functional aspect of language use, focusing on what people do with language or what language can do for its users. Therefore,

(3)

138

researchers often use CDA as a method that can describe, interpret and explain relationships among languages and other social factors (Rogers, 2004).

Wodak and Meyer’s (2009) historical approach to CDA relates discourse to the historical settings, occasions and standards organizing discourse as a shape of aggregate information and recollections in relevance to time and place. Such an approach is dependent on the presumption that analyzing the linguistic features of discourse is not satisfactory for discourse comprehension and elucidation, since all vital relevant components are fundamental to CDA in order to come up with the social, political and ideological capacities of discourse.

Wodak and Meyer emphasize the basic part of extralinguistic components that have commitments to the implications of discourse. These components include society, culture, belief systems, political components, and the relationship between discourses. This approach has been embraced to scrutinize numerous social phenomena such as sexism, bigotry, and anti- Semitism.

The present research is much concerned with contrastive argumentation in political discourse as it is represented in presidential rhetoric as well as in the dialogical approach, including contributions that are closer to the pragma-dialectics of van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992), as well as the pragmatic logic of Grize (1990), Jäger (2001) and Toulmin (2003). The selected speeches about INWs can permit us better insight into the types of relations between different identities and social positions presented. These texts reflect their different societies and the events happening at this crucial time. Analyzing what is written in these texts is a way of drawing out the ideologies represented.

U.S. and Iran Rhetoric: Past Studies

Using Fairclough’s approach, Rudyk (2003) illustrates his analysis of manipulative power in the political fragments of the US’s position in Iraq in President Bush’s State of the Union speech. Rudyk focuses on signs of manipulation at the levels of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Through a multidisciplinary approach to manipulation, the study elicits discursive, cognitive and social mechanisms of manipulation in the speech.

Horváth (2009) conducts his study by examining the persuasive strategies in President Obama’s speech as well as the covert ideology in his inaugural address using Fairclough’s (1995) model. The analysis of the study is grounded in the notion that “ideologies reside in texts”, that “it is not possible to read off ideologies from texts”, and that “texts are open to diverse interpretations” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 57). His analysis reveals that the key ideological components of Obama’s speech are often summarized into pragmatism, liberalism, inclusiveness, acceptance of religious and ethnic diversity, and unity. He recognizes that the foremost prominent words employed by Obama are ‘nation’, ‘new America’, and an overall dominance of the personal pronoun ‘we’, which is evidence of Obama’s inclusive perception of the American society and a need for unity, understood as necessary within the time of serious national peril.

Sardabi, Biria and Azin (2014) adopted a CDA approach to examine the discursive characteristics underlying the United Nations (UN) address of President Hassan Rouhani.

Utilizing van Dijk’s (2004) framework, Rouhani’s first UN speech (in 2013) was analyzed to explore the potential ideologies, signalled by the persuasive strategies and rhetorical devices employed to express his political views. The results reveal that Rouhani employed a wide range of discursive mechanisms like the positive ‘self’ and negative ‘other’ presentation strategies.

(4)

139

The use of the macro strategies of ‘positive self-representation’ and ‘negative other- representation’, as well as 25 other more subtle strategies, turned out to be very precise measures for the evaluation of attitudes and opinions. The findings reveal the complicated relationship between ideology and discourse, and imply that adopting a critical discourse analysis perspective can be conducive with respect to expanding readers’ critical thinking abilities as well as their awareness.

KhosraviNik (2014) attempted to shed light on the nature and quality of discursive strategies used in Iranian discourse concerning the nuclear program as represented in an influential Iranian daily, Kayhan. Working within the frame of CDA (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009), the general orientation of the study inclines towards explicating how newspaper texts may come to be perceived within the Iranian socio-political context. The main findings concern the broad argumentative aspects of one of the more influential Iranian dailies, which functions as a flagship of what can arguably be called the overarching conservative rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The broad discursive approaches of the newspaper are distinguished in terms of a worldwide, overarching, political macro-legitimatory approach versus a local, restricted micro-legitimatory approach towards identities of ‘self’ and ‘other’ and the nature of the political conflict over Iran’s nuclear program.

Within the broader context of language and political communication, Santoso et al.

(2020) studied populism in new media, focusing on the online presidential campaign discourse in Indonesia. Employing Fairclough’s CDA framework, they analyzed a range of social media entries and found that both populist discourse and political discourse were amplified by online news coverage and further extended via social media platforms, contributing to a hegemonic theme – which includes terrorism and radicalism – in Indonesia’s 2019 presidential election.

This strand, to a large extent, echoes the dominant pattern of portrayals via incessant political communication – to project ideologies and to legitimize political might; Rajandran (2019), in a study on Malaysia’s budget speeches, argued that the Barisan Nasional government

“positioned itself as indispensable to economic growth as it sought to legitimize its political power” (pp. 32-33). In a similar vein, Nor Fariza et al. (2019), in their corpus-driven research around the word ‘ekonomi’ (‘economy’) in the Malaysian Hansard Corpus, found binary conceptualizations of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ and that the representations surrounding the word

‘ekonomi’ involved justifying the government’s actions.

Scope of The Present Study

The present study covers two speeches delivered by two contrastive world leaders: Trump and Rouhani. We selected two of their speeches on a similar topic (INWs) and incorporated their states in the framework of CDA introduced by Jäger (2001) and Toulmin (2003).

More specifically, we are particularly interested in their arguments as the construction of a viewpoint based on a specific ideology, a construction built up with the aim of modifying the speakers’ performance. Yet, also of interest to us are the compositional aspects of their statements that tend to result in (apparent) successful persuasion.

Ferrari (2007) considers the political discourse of the two presidents to be intrinsically persuasive and informs a power relation. Persuasive processes are often analyzed to see how certain ideologies are constructed and transmitted. Therefore, this study focuses on how the feelings of the public/audience can be influenced or impacted through persuasive processes –

(5)

140

the selection and use of certain words, phrases and linguistic plays through which people can be led into patriotism.

The researchers of the present study sought to examine the manner in which INWs were described by the heads of two contrastive states, and to identify the formal arguments underlying their political texts – namely, the ideological patterns inscribed within their arguments and persuasive discourse.

METHODOLOGY

Corpus and Analytical Framework

The rationale behind selecting President Trump’s and President Rouhani’s UNGA speeches (2017 and 2018 respectively) as the corpus for this study is the significance of the two speeches in determining the path of American-Iran relations after the US withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, reached in July of 2015.

Although the Iranian president, Rouhani, intended to persuade the international community to believe in him and to feel convinced that they can choose a different course of action with Iran in the future, Trump utilized different discursive and rhetorical strategies to pursue specific political, social and economic goals concerning the sociopolitical situation in Iran. Therefore, studying the persuasive discursive and argumentative functions of their speeches is important, since research into argumentation can provide us with considerable insights.

This paper provides a discursive analysis of Trump’s and Rouhani’s speeches; more precisely, this research examines how specifically chosen words express and reflect the ideologies and viewpoints of the two presidents, and the effects that can potentially occur or take place.

Figure 1: Toulmin’s argument structure (adapted, 2003)

For our analysis, we adapted Toulmin’s (2003) argument structure and Jäger’s (2001) six-step procedure for analyzing political discourse. First, the structure of Toulmin’s model as applied in our research is portrayed in Figure 1; an argumentation schema may follow the

(6)

141

sequence of data (D), a claim (C), and a warrant (W). According to Toulmin, an argument can be represented as an interconnected set of claim, data and warrant; both the claim and the data are connected since warrants and backings act as substantiations.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT TRUMP’S SPEECH (2018, UNGA) Institutional Frame ‘Context’

The presidency of Donald Trump began on January 20, 2017, as the Republican Party nominate. He was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States. The Republican Party is known by its limited powers compared to the liberal democratic one. This speech was made by President Donald Trump in 2018 at UNGA to address one of the more common issues with regards to INWs in the Middle East. In his speech, Trump tried to justify his country withdrawing from the Iranian deal by mentioning many reasons that he believed to be powerful in terms of convincing his country’s allies as well as the UN.

This speech was delivered in front of a civilian audience, was also available via the Internet, and was translated into many languages. In the speech, Trump mentioned ‘Iran’ 17 times, ‘Iranian regime’ 5 times, ‘nuclear weapons’ 7 times, ‘nuclear programs’ 3 times, ‘terror’

3 times, and ‘terrorism’ twice.

Text ‘Surface’

This part of the analysis concerns the linguistic features of the speech, and the table below shows the topics addressed in the speech (this provides a succinct overview of the thematic structures):

Table 1: Thematic structures

Line CONTENT

Introduction

1-5 Reference to the Iranian regime as the leading state of terror and its support to militia like Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and Hezbollah.

6-12 The bombing of the US embassies by the Iranian State as well as the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Body

13-17 Reference to the previous US administration as well as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

18-26 Description of how much the deal allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium and the economic sanctions lifted by the nuclear weapon deal.

27-31 Description of the Iranian promise as a lie and the publication of Israeli documents about the Iranian regime.

32-37 The growth of the Iranian budget and the decreasing of its economy while building nuclear- capable missiles.

38-42 Thought of having nuclear arms in the Middle East.

43-48 The absence of the required mechanisms as well as the qualified rights to inspect important locations.

49-55 The reconsideration of the Iranian deal that must be renegotiated or terminated.

56-60 Reference to the unified understanding of the US and its allies that Iran must never acquire nuclear weapons.

(7)

142

61-67 Describing the current agreement as a decaying and rotten structure, and the announcement of US withdrawal from the Iranian deal.

68-80 Reference to the presidential memorandum to begin sanctions on Iran, the threats of the US, and the meeting with Kim Jong-un.

81-87 The solution to the Iranian nuclear threat.

Conclusion

88-102 The compassion of American people for Iranians and the refusal of Iranian leaders to negotiate a new deal.

Rhetorical Means

Form of Argumentation and Argumentation Strategies

Example 1

Ground “The Iranian regime is the leading state sponsor of terror”

Warrant “Since the Iranian regime supports terror, it represents the future terror on the world as well as the US”

Claim “The Iranian regime represents danger to the US”

This argument claims that the Iranian regime is a danger to the US because Iran leads and sponsors terror on the world as well as the US. Thus, both Iran and danger has become one idea, as brought forth by Trump.

Example 2

Ground “It exports dangerous missiles, fuels conflict across the Middle East, and supports terrorist proxies and militias such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and Al- Qaeda”

Warrant “Iran is responsible for transferring danger in the Middle East by supporting militias such as Hezbollah, Hamas, The Taliban, and Al-Qaeda”

Claim “The Iranian state must not have the nuclear weapons”

This argument claims that it is necessary for Iran to stop having nuclear weapons since Iran is behind militias as Hamas, Hezbollah, The Taliban, and Al-Qaeda. Thus, allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons will be considered as spreading conflict and terror across the Middle East, in which these militias are found.

Example 3

Ground “The Iranian regime has funded its long reign of chaos and terror by plundering the wealth of its own people”

Warrant “The Iranian state supports its regime by plundering the wealth of Iranian people to make a government of chaos and terror”

Claim “Iran is a corrupted government”

This argument claims that Iran is a corrupted government because it has plundered the wealth of the Iranian people. This plundering of wealth makes Iran a government of chaos and terror since it is not concerned about the interests and welfare of its people.

(8)

143

Example 4

Ground “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will”

Warrant “The Iranian deal was not considered as a peace deal and it will never be”

Claim “The Iranian deal must have never been done”

This argument claims that it is important for the Iranian deal to be stopped (or never done).

The reason behind this is that such a deal is not considered as a deal of peace in the first place.

Example 5

Ground “Since the agreement, Iran’s bloody ambitions have grown only more brazen”

Warrant “This agreement represents Iran’s ambition to increase its power which has become something abnormal for a dream to be achieved”

Claim “The agreement is the Iranian ambition”

This argument demonstrates a very critical point for both the US and Iran, since it represents an Iranian ambition which the US has been actively trying to halt.

Collective Symbolism

In the US President’s speech, we found that America is represented as a victim and Iran as a villain. This is seen in: “The Iranian regime is the leading state sponsor of terror. It exports dangerous missiles, fuels conflict across the Middle East, and supports terrorist proxies and militias such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda”. In this utterance, Trump mentions the word ‘terror’ twice, representing Iran as the leading state sponsor of terror. In this case, America also represents both the victim and the hero, battling against the villain that is categorized as the active aggressor, one that would kill if it could. Additionally, the text also answers the two remaining questions contained within the metaphors ‘What is the crime?’ and

‘What counts as victory?’; the crime that had been committed against the victim are the numerous listings of attacks and bombings as well as attempted schemes attributed to the terrorists found throughout the speech.

The following exempts clearly exemplify the perspective of crimes being committed against the victim: “The Iranian regime is the leading state sponsor of terror. It exports dangerous missiles, fuels conflict across the Middle East, and supports terrorist proxies and militias such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda. Over the years, Iran and its proxies have bombed American embassies and military installations, murdered hundreds of American service members, and kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured American citizens.”

Finally, Trump mentions the solution for this chaos and danger, putting forth that the best solution is either to renegotiate or terminate the Iran deal: “I announced last October that the Iran deal must be either renegotiated or terminated.”

Players

The pronominal structure of this text suggests a strong juxtaposition between the pronouns

‘our’, ‘theirs’ and ‘its’. In the isolated discourse strands that contain the phrase ‘terrorist activities’ or ‘nuclear weapons’, the accuracy rate that the pronouns ‘its’ or ‘them’ referred to

(9)

144

‘terrorist activities’ or ‘nuclear aspirations’, and the rate of the pronouns ‘our’ and ‘we’ denoted American efforts, understanding, or government.

Table 2: Pronominal structures

Pronouns Occurrences Referents

My 2 Fellow American, upcoming meeting

Our 7 Efforts, allies, end, friends, understanding, conviction

Its 15 Proxies, own people, pursuit, maligned behavior, economy, new funds, core, menacing activity, terrorist activities, nuclear aspirations, people

Them 1 Nuclear weapons

We 12 American people

It 12 Iran, dollars, deal, regime

Me 1 The President

Theirs 4 Weapons, dreams, God, history

I 10 President Trump

You 3 People of Iran, audience

We noticed how the social actor ‘Terror’ is realized in the discourse fragments, and identified six distinct ‘activated’ constructions:

1. The Iranian regime is the leading state sponsor of terror.

2. It exports dangerous missiles, fuels conflict across the Middle East, and supports terrorist proxies and militias such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda.

3. The Iranian regime has funded its long reign of chaos and terror by plundering the wealth of its own people.

4. This disastrous deal, this regime, and it is a regime of great terror, the power to support militias in the Middle East.

5. Finally, the deal does nothing to constrain Iran’s destabilizing activities, including its support for terrorism.

6. In just a short period of time, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapon.

Ideological Statements

The argumentations in the text demonstrate the following ideological statements:

1. My fellow Americans, today I want to update the world on our efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

2. The Iranian regime is the leading state sponsor of terror.

3. It exports dangerous missiles, fuels conflict across the Middle East, and supports terrorist proxies and militias such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda.

The first statement can be identified through the word ‘prevent’ which is seen as an American attempt, represented by Trump, to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. Trump uses the word ‘prevent’ to assure his audience that nuclear weapons must not be possessed by Iran since Iran is portrayed as “the leading state sponsor of terror” in the second sentence. The second sentence is employed as evidence of or promotion for Trump’s first sentence, painting

(10)

145

Iran as a villain and the US and its people as victims of Iran. To further augment his speech, Trump provides more examples about Iran’s illegal practices including its terrorist support for terrorist militias. Thus, the message of Trump’s speech can be categorized into two primary angles: one is to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and the second is that the reason behind this prevention is to halt Iran’s reign of terror.

ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT ROUHANI’S SPEECH (2017, UNGA) Institutional Frame ‘Context’

The presidency of Hassan Rouhani began on August 3, 2013. He won a re-election in 2017. He began his political activities by following Ayatollah Khomeini (Islamist Iranian movement, 1965). President Rouhani delivered his speech to address the 72nd UN General Assembly on September 20, 2017, at the United Nations. Rouhani’s speech was delivered in view of the Iranian nuclear weapon deal. In his speech, Rouhani mentioned his government’s plans and intentions concerning the nuclear program as well as developing Iran. Another thing that Rouhani focused on is the readiness of Iran to embrace friendship with all who seek peace and respect, assuming that moderation is the path towards peace.

This speech has been translated into many languages and is available on the Internet.

In this speech, Rouhani mentioned ‘Iran’ 22 times, ‘moderation’ 10 times, ‘peace’ 10 times,

‘weapons’ 5 times, ‘nuclear’ 4 times, ‘respect’ 4 times, and ‘US’ twice.

Text ‘Surface’

This part of the analysis concerns the linguistic features of the speech, and the table below shows the topics addressed in the speech (this provides a succinct overview of the thematic structures):

Table 3: Thematic structures

Line CONTENT

Introduction 1-4 Congratulating the presidency of the general assembly.

5-9 The 12th presidential election of Iran.

Body

10-16 The huge and political investment for the Iranian people represented by the election.

17-22 Pursuing nuclear negotiations internationally.

23-29 Moderation is the path of the Iranian people.

30-38 Iran never threatens anyone but it does not tolerate threats.

39-44 Muslims in so many places live in misery and poverty.

45-50 Supporting the rights of the Jewish people and restoration of the Palestinians.

51-57 Fighting terror and religious extremism in the Middle East.

58-67 JCPOA is the outcome of the international community.

68-73 Iran has concluded scores of development agreements with advanced countries of both the East and the West.

74-80 Depriving Iran of nuclear weapons.

81-87 The threat of the rogue Zionist regime.

88-95 The rogue newcomers to the world of politics and the new US administration.

96-103 The initiative of the world against violence and extremism.

104-111 The defense capabilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran are solely defensive.

(11)

146

112-117 Iran will never allow its people to become victims of catastrophic delusions.

118-121 The crises in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain can only be resolved through cessation of hostilities.

122-127 The US has only brought war, misery, poverty and the rise of terrorism and extremism to the region.

128-132 The Iranian economy can become the most vibrant emerging economy within the next 20 years.

133-138 The enjoying of Iran’s largest gas and oil reserves, and its preparation to engage in long-term cooperation to advance global energy security.

139-149 Iran’s achievements in gas pipelines, national electricity grids, and rail and road transport.

150-156 Iran’s intention to build an advanced Iran, and participate in the development of a secure and stable region based on ethics and respect.

Conclusion

157-161 To turn the discourse of imposition into dialogue is the result of moderation across the world.

Rhetorical Means

Form of Argumentation and Argumentation Strategies

Example 1

Ground “Moderation is the inclination as well as the chosen path of the great Iranian people”

Warrant “The Iranian nation does not seek to get involved in any war with anyone”

Claim “Iran is the path of peace”

This argument claims that Iran’s main concern is peace. Thus, Iran is not concerned with any form of war (or conflict), since war and peace are total opposites. President Rouhani, in this argumentation, tries to emphasise that peace is the only option that Iran has.

Example 2

Ground “We never threaten anyone; but we do not tolerate threats from anyone”

Warrant “Iran does not seek to threaten any country or represent any threat to any country, at the same time it will not allow threats from any country”

Claim “Iran has the ability to face any threat”

This argument claims that Iran does not represent any threat to any nation since it does not threaten anyone, and will not allow any threat against it because Iran has all that is required to defend itself against any threat.

Example 3

Ground “It is not possible that a rogue and racist regime trample upon the most basic rights of the Palestinians, and the usurpers of this land enjoy security”

Warrant “It’s injustice to see the Palestinians be deprived of their basic rights as well as to remain speechless to face the racist regime that tries to control the world”

Claim “Palestinians are deprived of their rights because of the rogue regime”

The claim of this argument is wholly concerned with the deprivation experienced by the Palestinian people (deprivation of their rights), brought on by a rogue regime that is racist, unethical, and controlling.

(12)

147

Example 4

Ground “Today, we are on the frontlines of fighting terror and religious extremism in the Middle East; not for sectarian or ethnic reasons but for an ethical, humanitarian and strategic one”

Warrant “Iran is facing the spread of terror in the Middle East because it is seeking peace”

Claim “Iran is against terrorism”

This argument claims that Iran is against terror since it seeks peace in the Middle East and this is achieved due to the Iranian resistance to the spread of terror in the region. President Rouhani, in this argument, insists that Iran’s fight against terror is not for sectarian purposes, but is both humanitarian and strategic.

Example 5

Ground “the truth of our faith and tenacity, and longevity of our revolution that we will never seek to export any of them in the way neo-colonialists do, with the heavy boots of soldiers”

Warrant “Iran is not like other nations that try to export its culture and faith by force”

Claim “Iran is not seeking to export its revolution”

This argument claims that it is completely wrong to believe that Iran exports its revolution because Iran’s path is negotiation and dialogue, unlike other modern colonialists that try to spread their culture and belief by force. Again, Rouhani insists on the idea that Iran is not the villain.

Collective Symbolism

In his speech, we found that President Rouhani considers moderation or peace as the path or tendency of the Iranian people. This is clearly found in “I declare before this august global assembly that moderation is the inclination as well as the chosen path of the great Iranian people. Moderation seeks neither isolation nor hegemony” and also in “The path of moderation is the path of peace; but a just and inclusive peace: not peace for one nation, and war and turmoil for others”. Thus, Iran showcases itself as a peaceful nation that tries to foster peace throughout the Middle East, and does not support or export terror: “We in Iran strive to build peace and promote the human rights of peoples and nations”.

Rouhani also claims that Iran does not threaten anyone and will not allow anyone to intimidate it, as seen in “We never threaten anyone; but we do not tolerate threats from anyone. Our discourse is one of dignity and respect and we are unmoved by threats and intimidation”. This utterance is a form of assurance that Iran seeks for peace and attempts to foster it since Iran does not threaten anyone but has the right to defend itself against any threat.

Another significant dimension that Rouhani focuses on is that Iran is not a racist nation since it welcomes other nations that are diverse in terms of religion and culture: “We are the same people who rescued the Jews from Babylonian servitude; opened our arms to welcome Armenian Christians in our midst, and created the ‘Iranian cultural continent’ with a unique mix of diverse religions and ethnicities”. The Iranian President also brought up a very important concept – terror in the Middle East. Rouhani insists that Iran is not responsible for

(13)

148

terror and religious extremism in the Middle East and is instead a nation that fights terror:

“Today, we are on the frontlines of fighting terror and religious extremism in the Middle East; not for sectarian or ethnic reasons but for an ethical, humanitarian and strategic one”.

This assures the audience of Iran’s intolerance of terror/terrorism.

Rouhani also mentions the legitimacy of the JCPOA agreement due to it being an international agreement, and how Iran is committed to it unlike the new US administration: “it belongs to the international community in its entirety, and not to only one or two countries.

The JCPOA can become a new model for global interactions; interactions based on mutual constructive engagement between all of us”, and also “By violating its international commitments, the new US administration only destroys its own credibility and undermines international confidence in negotiating with it, or accepting its word or promise”.

Finally, Rouhani mentions Iran’s contribution in the WAVE initiative: “Ladies and gentlemen, four years ago, the Islamic Republic of Iran sponsored the initiative of the World Against Violence and Extremism (WAVE) in this Assembly”, to emphasize Iran’s efforts against violence and extremism as well as to show Iran’s solution (in handling global and regional crises) which are dialogue and negotiations: “We consider dialogue and negotiations based on a positive-sum paradigm as the only path towards the resolution of global and regional crises”.

Players

Table 4: Pronominal structures

Pronouns Occurrences Referents

We 35 Iranians, government of Iran

I 8 President Rouhani

It 12 Moderation, JCPOA, option, Islamic Republic of Iran, US administration, US government, Iran’s economy, Iran’s policy Our 26 Population, asset, revolution, culture, faith, poetry, philosophy,

ambassadors, poets, mystics, philosophers, doors, nuclear weapons, knowledge, people, talent, approach, neighbors, nations, missiles,

region, strategies, achievements

Its 10 Issuance for implementation of citizen rights, Iran’s history, Iran’s ancient empire, official region, Iranian revolution, entirety of international community, Zionist nuclear arsenal, US international

commitment, US credibility, US promise and word, US people

Your 1 UN Secretary General election

My 2 President Rouhani platform, Iranian government

You 1 Audience

His 2 Secretary General high office, Secretary General crucial responsibilities

Him 1 Secretary General

They 1 East and West countries

Their 1 Iranian hospitality

Us 4 Iran and JCPOA countries, Iranian people

President Rouhani employed 13 types of pronouns to indicate a variety of topics considered to form the core of his speech. He mentions his people and government 35 times using the first person pronoun ‘We’. The second type of pronoun (that occurred a total of 26 times) is the

(14)

149

possessive pronoun ‘Our’, employed for the purpose of naming different elements concerning Iran’s culture, people, philosophy, faith, and knowledge.

IDEOLOGICAL STATEMENTS

The argumentations in the text demonstrate the following ideological statements:

1. Ladies and gentlemen, I declare before this august global assembly that moderation is the inclination as well as the chosen path of the great Iranian people. Moderation seeks neither isolation nor hegemony; it implies neither indifference, nor intransigence. The path of moderation is the path of peace. We in Iran strive to build peace and promote the human rights of peoples and nations.

2. We never threaten anyone; but we do not tolerate threats from anyone. Our discourse is one of dignity and respect and we are unmoved by threats and intimidation.

3. Today, we are on the frontlines of fighting terror and religious extremism in the Middle East; not for sectarian or ethnic reasons but for an ethical, humanitarian and strategic one.

4. It will be a great pity if this agreement were to be destroyed by “rogue” newcomers to the world of politics: the world will have lost a great opportunity. But such unfortunate behavior will never impede Iran’s course of progress and advancement. By violating its international commitments, the new US administration only destroys its own credibility and undermines international confidence in negotiating with it, or accepting its word or promise.

The first statement can be identified through the word ‘moderation’ which is seen as an Iranian way of dealing with others to reflect peace because Rouhani used the word ‘strive’

to assure the audience of Iran’s attempt to achieve peace and promote the rights of both people and nations. Another thing Rouhani wants to demonstrate is that ‘peace’ is the default choice of the Iranian people, since the path of moderation is the path of peace.

The second statement largely concerns the word ‘threat’ which clearly denotes that Iran does not threaten anyone because it seeks peace, but will not allow any threats upon it.

Rouhani wants to illustrate that Iran, as a nation, believes in dignity and discourse instead of intimidation.

The third statement is used as evidence that Iran is against terror since it fights it and this can be seen clearly in the phrase ‘fighting terror and religious extremism’, meaning that Iran does not support terror as President Trump claims, but instead wages war against terror for ethical, humanitarian and strategic reasons.

The fourth statement concerns Iran’s resentment of the new US administration with respect to the JCPOA agreement; Rouhani describes the new US administration as ‘rogue newcomers to the world of politics’. The message of Rouhani’s speech can be considered in two key points. The first one is the desire to change the stereotype of Iran, from a nation supporting terror into one that fights terror and supports peace. The second is to assert Iran’s right to have nuclear weapons since the JCPOA is an international agreement and all the defense capabilities of Iran are for the purpose of national security.

(15)

150

CONCLUSION

In this paper, we studied the speeches of two heads of state from the lens of CDA. Their speeches concern Iran’s nuclear weapons. Analyses of the speeches reveal that the two world leaders are on two opposite ends of a continuum. Although the topic of their speech is the same, the reasons behind their words and the results for both Americans and Iranians (politicians and the masses alike) are arguably very different, with Trump and Rouhani reflecting two extremely different viewpoints through the channel of language.

This study has revealed various discourse strands and allowed us to reach fair inferences, but not wholly conclusive deductions (such is the nature of CDA), about the leaders’ multiple personal and impersonal motivations (such as materialistic and spiritual interests), social positions, power relations, and situational positions that trigger the production of the texts. It appears that the analysis of texts with the same topic can result in extremely diverse findings, primarily due to the varied political, social and ideological stimuli experienced by each individual.

In this study, the two heralds of the language of fear tried to win over the audience and gain political leverage. We are all aware of the tragic consequences of INWs. However, Rouhani saw it as a necessity while Trump condemned it completely. These two differing positions are rooted in two oppositional ideologies or political stances: Trump is from a (rival) nation against INWs due to its concerns for global safety, while Rouhani presents Iran as an entity yearning for peace and diplomatic dialogue. Essentially, the two leaders propagandize ideologies regardless of the effects of war.

These are all achieved via discourse, through the language of fear. On the basis of this, it can be concluded, at least in general terms, that language is in the hands of those in power – to be utilized as they see fit to achieve certain goals. In essence, one of the ways through which the lords of power and politics represent their agenda is language, and this study’s findings show us that world leaders can adopt opposite strands on the same event and employ the language of fear as a means of promoting their agendas – be it political, social, or personal.

REFERENCES

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London:

Longman.

Fairclough, N. (2003). Analyzing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London:

Routledge.

Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London:

Routledge.

Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In: Van Dijk, T.A. (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 258-284). London: Sage.

Gee, J.P. (2005). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and methods (Second Edition).

London: Routledge.

Hassen, R. (2015). Discourse as medium of knowledge: Transmission of knowledge by transmission of discourse. Journal of Education and Practice, 6(31), 119-128.

Horváth, J. (2009). Critical discourse analysis of Obama’s political discourse. In: Proceedings of International Conference of Language, Literature and Culture in a Changing Transatlantic World (pp. 45-56), University Library of Prešov University, Slovakia.

(16)

151

Jackson, R. (2005). Writing the war on terrorism: Language, politics and counterterrorism.

New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Jackson, R., Murphy, E., & Poynting, S. (2009). Contemporary state terrorism: Theory and practice. London: Routledge.

Jäger, S. (2001). Discourse and knowledge: Theoretical and methodological aspects of critical discourse and dispositive analysis. In: Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 32-62). London: Sage.

Johnstone, B. (2008). Discourse analysis (Second Edition). Oxford: Blackwell.

KhosraviNik, M. (2014). Macro and micro legitimation in discourse on Iran’s nuclear programme: The case of Iranian national newspaper Kayhan. Discourse and Society, 26(1), 52-73.

KhosraviNik, M. (2015). Discourse, identity and legitimacy. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Nor Fariza Mohd Nor, Anis Nadiah Che Abdul Rahman, Azhar Jaluddin, Imran Ho Abdullah,

& Sabrina Tiun (2019). A corpus-driven analysis of representations around the word

‘ekonomi’ in Malaysian Hansard Corpus. GEMA Online: Journal of Language Studies, 19(4), 66-95.

Rajandran, K. (2019). Portraying economic competence in Malaysian federal budget speeches.

GEMA Online: Journal of Language Studies, 19(1), 17-35.

Rogers, R. (2004). An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education. London:

Lawrence Erlbaum.

Rudyk, I. (2003). Power relations in President Bush’s State of the Union speech. The International Journal of Language Society and Culture, 23, 68-76.

Santoso, D.H., Jamaluddin Aziz, Pawito, Utari, P., & Kartono, D.T. (2020). Populism in new media: The online presidential campaign discourse in Indonesia. GEMA Online:

Journal of Language Studies, 20(2), 115-133.

Sardabi, N., Biria, R., & Azin, N. (2014). Rouhani’s UN speech: A change in ideology or strategy. International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics World, 7(3), 84- 97.

Toulmin, S.E. (2003). The uses of argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van Dijk, T.A. (2004). From text grammar to critical discourse analysis: A brief academic autobiography. Barcelona: Universität Pompeu Fabra.

Van Dijk, T.A. (2019). Macrostructures: An interdisciplinary study of global structures in discourse, interaction, and cognition. London: Routledge.

Wodak, R. (2015). The politics of fear: What right-wing populist discourses mean. London:

Sage.

Wodak, R., & Chilton, P. (2005). A new agenda in (critical) discourse analysis: Theory, methodology and interdisciplinarity. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2009). Methods of critical discourse analysis (Second Edition).

London: Sage.

(17)

152

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ALI BADEEN MOHAMMED AL-RIKABY (Corresponding Author) College of Arts, Mustansiriyah University

[email protected]

HAYDER S. NASER

College of Arts, Mustansiriyah University [email protected]

DEBBITA TAN AI LIN

School of Languages, Literacies and Translation, Universiti Sains Malaysia [email protected]